DCR-SX45 very low quality output

[EnricoSb]

Hello everybody.

I got this handycam and I noticed the incredible low quality of the videos when watched on the laptop screen.

When seen on the handy's small screen the videos look better, with the overall sharpness and the colours ok; when I move the video on the laptop I notice that the quality is very poor...

Is this normal?

How can I improve the overall quality?

Maybe using a post-processing software?

Thanks

[Mick2011]

Hi EnricoSb, welcome to the Sony Forums

Are you sure you are recording in HQ mode? Make sure LP (long play) is switched off, at least. Check the Handbook p26.

The default is SP, so you have to switch it to HQ: touch Menu and find Record Mode. HQ should give you very nice full-screen video

It sounds as if you might have selected LP mode, which will take the smallest (lowest quality) possible to fit the most footage onto the disk.

Cheers

Mick

[EnricoSb]

Hi Mick and thank you for answering!

I have to say that my complain IS about HQ.. I tried on diffeent laptops and the result is the same: very good videos on the handycam's little screen and very bad, dull, unsharp and blurred videos on the laptops.

Maybe I'm missing a driver or something, no idea really...

I hope you can help me

Thanks a lot

Enrico

[Mick2011]

Ok, there's a couple of factors to consider with these less expensive SD camcorders.

If you're viewing full-screen on a reasonably modern laptop, you're quite possibly looking at a 1200-pixel display; this is HD territory. SD footage being only 720 pixels (in HQ mode) the movie will look very soft and grainy enlarged to 1200+. If you reduce the viewing window down to roughly half-screen it should look a lot better, as it will then be at its native resolution. Footage will generally look at its best up to YouTube-sized playback but deteriorate beyond that.

The SX range does well in the handy, portable, multi-featured stakes, but image quality is not a priority and to be fair, most reveiwers score the cameras accordingly: high marks for convenience and features, lower for image quality.

The low price reflects a small sensor chip and relatively heavy compression required to fit a reasonable amount of data into a smaller space, all of which affects final image quality. Unfortunately all of this processing is done in-camera and generally speaking, post-processing will not improve it.

If you avoid shooting in low light you'll get less graininess; good frontal daylight will give best results all round.

Hope that's of some help.

Mick